10 Steps to Setting Your Life on Goals Street!

04Jun

Good morning!! I have been in constant prayer over the past few weeks about my life purpose, decisions that I’ve made, the wrong turns, and my future. I’m a writer, I’m always jotting notes down and I have tons of notebooks, journals, and sheets of paper with revelations and thoughts on how to live the best days of my life now! A few weeks ago at The Rock Church, which by the way if you’re in the Raleigh-Durham area, we would love for you to come and visit (yes…shameless plug)..i preached about potential. One of my points was potential without a proper strategy is pointless. You must have a strategy for acheiving what you know God has planted you on this earth to do. Why because faith without works is dead! (James 2:26)

So check out 10 steps to setting the proper goals in your life!

1. Start with Prayer If you set goals in the context of prayer, there is a much higher likelihood that your goals will glorify God, and if they don’t glorify God, then they aren’t worth setting in the first place. So start with prayer.

2. Check your MotivesIf you set selfish goals, you’d be better off spiritually if you didn’t accomplish them. That’s why you need to check your motives. This is huge…Ask yourself why you are pursuing what you are pursuing?

3. Think in CategoriesIt is easy to become overwhelmed by all of the ideas, thoughts, and dreams you have. All of my goals are broken in categories, it is easier to manage various components and not get my circuits overload…and not accomplish anything and feel like a failure: 1) family 2) influential 3) experiential 4) physical, and 5) travel. The obvious omission is a category for spiritual goals, but that is by intention. All of my goals have a spiritual dimension to them.

4. Be SpecificIf a goal isn’t measurable, you have no way of knowing whether or not you’ve accomplished it. Losing weight isn’t a goal if you don’t have a target weight within a target timeline. (which i’m striving to do!)

5. Write It DownHabakkuk 2, tells us to “write the vision and make it plain…” Writing your goals, vision, dreams, and plans are effective in helping you to build momentum and stay focused! If you haven’t written down your goals, you haven’t really set them. There is something powerful that happens when you verbalize a goal, whether that is in a conversation or in a journal.

6. Include OthersI used to have lots of personal goals, but I have replaced most of them with shared goals. Nothing cements a relationship like a shared goal. Goals are relational glue. I’ve discovered that when you go after a goal with another person, it doubles your joy. I say it all the time it’s better if we do it together!

7. Celebrate Along the WayWhen you accomplish a goal, celebrate it. Whenever you acheive steps along the way to your goal, take time to celebrate. Don’t be so focused on your destination that you fail to enjoy the journey along the way!

8. Dream BigYour life goal list will include goals that are big and small. It will include goals that are short-term and long-term. But I have one piece of advice: make sure you have a few big, scary, audacious goals that literally scare your socks off!

9. Think LongThe sad truth is that most people spend more time planning their summer vacation than they do planning the rest of their life, or planning the details of their wedding than they do the post-honeymoon life. Goal setting is good stewardship. Instead of letting things happen, goals help us make things happen. Instead of living out of memory, goals help us live out of imagination. I choose to live out to the possibility!

10. Pray HardDreaming is a form of praying and praying is a form of dreaming. The more you dream, the more you’ll pray. And the more you pray, the more you’ll dream!

I hope this helps and you set the goals of the remaining months of this year! Remember this year is halfway over.. you still have time to reach your goals! I’d love for you to comment on this post and share some of your goals in life…I want to pray with you and believe God for the best!